The regionalization and globalization of commerce, capital, communications, and immigration have profound political implications. Nation-states are losing much of their traditional power to control what happens within their borders. That has both desirable and undesirable effects.

Regional and global markets offer propects of greater prosperity through improved economic efficiency and complementarity. Instantaneous global communications subject governments to unprecedented levels of public and international scrutiny.

Yet absent regional and global democratic institutions, a democratic deficit is opening up as more and more decisions are made by elite international bodies that are not elected by the people whom their decisions affect. And absent regional and global environmental and social welfare standards, gains won by citizens of the advanced democracies through costly social struggles are being threatened.

The Project for Global Democracy and Human Rights explores issues of democracy and human rights in the context of globalization. It identifies problems, and points to solutions, with an emphasis on multilateral approaches.

Ultimately, the solution to the problems of globalization is to expand democratic institutions and the rule of law to the regional and global levels. That process is already underway, as evidenced by the development of:

• international human rights treaties, such as the United Nations Convention Against Torture;
• international human rights courts, such as the International Criminal Court and the European Court of Human Rights;
  
• international environmental treaties, such as the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
• international legislatures, such as the European Parliament
  

The Project studies and popularizes these developments, and offers policy recommendations for their further elaboration into a world order that secures fundamental human rights for all human beings.

The Project recognizes internationally-accepted definitions of human rights, as codified at the global level in the United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and as codified at the regional level in the European Convention on Human Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights.

The project, formerly known as the Americas Project, has received support from the General Service Foundation, Arca Foundation, Max and Anna Levinson Foundation, J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation, Norman Foundation, Tides Foundation, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, the Funding Exchange, and the Bay Area Institute/Pacific News Service.

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